Category Archives: Books

Chasm City

Posted by on February 27, 2011 No comments | 2,041 views

Chasm CityAlright, time for another review of an Alastair Reynolds book. This time Chasm City, the second book in the Revelation Space series. This book is independent from book 1, Revelation Space and book 3, Redemption Ark, but takes place in this same universe. The book is about the legendary city on the planet Yellowstone, an earth-like planet orbiting the close star Epsilon Eridani, a star often used in Sci-Fi. The city is located inside a big chasm on the planet surface and has been hit by the melding plague, a plague that attacks technology, even nanotechnology in humans.

The main character, Tanner Mirabel, is from the planet Sky’s Edge, the first planet to be colonized by human beings. The story of this fist colonization is a key element in the book, and we follow the journey of the first settlers in parallel with the main story, a writing style Reynolds use in most of his books. Mirabel is a gun for hire chasing someone into the complex post-plague social world of Chasm City. The story takes us through his introduction to this complex social structure, and as always with Reynold’s stories, it has many fascinating layers of technology, politics and faith. The people we follow turn out not te be quite who they appear to be at first, and as always, Reynolds make everything come together at the end.

This is probably one of the best books yet by Reynolds, and a favourite of mine together with Pushing Ice. It is highly recommended for any Sci-Fi fan, and it can be read as a standalone book without following the series as there are little of the story that depends on book 1 besides a few references.

Kindle LaTeX Template

Posted by on January 31, 2011 11 comments | 6,931 views

So I finally got around to buy myself a Kindle from Amazon. Very nice device, but it is not very good with standard pdfs. I have a number of books laying around in text format, and the internet is full of good classics that are public domain (i.e. not under copyright). Check for instance Project Gutenberg which has a number of books available, also prepared for Kindle and other mobile devices. Anyway, as I said, I needed a LaTeX template that is formatted and suitable for generating pdfs for the Kindle. I googled a bit around and found one that, with some modification, worked well.

Here is the template.

…and a few books I’ve formatted using that template:

Jules Verne – A Journey to the Interior of the Earth [PDF] [LaTeX]
Jules Verne – Around the World in 80 Days [PDF] [LaTeX]
Jules Verne – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea [PDF] [LaTeX]


Edit on 10.05.2011:
Based on a comment below I tested the template with an equation. To do this i added the following packages:

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}

The result is shown here (click for larger image):Kindle

Terminal World

Posted by on October 10, 2010 No comments | 2,402 views

Terminal WorldTerminal World is the latest book by Alastair Reynolds. The book is set some time in the future in a time when humans are struggling to survive on a cooling planet where zones restrict where advanced technology or even biological life can survive. The main human city is located on the surface of a large spiralling spire reaching out into space. Both the zones and the spire are remnants of earlier times when humans were more technologically advanced. That time is gone, and little knowledge remains of this time. Most of humanity live in primitive zones where only primitive machinery can function.

The main character of the book, Quillon, is an angel. Angels are descendants of some modified and enhanced part of the human race. They can only survive in the zones that allow the highest level of technology. Quillon has been modified to serve as an infiltrator in the lower level zones, and now someone is out to kill him. The story first takes us through his flight, and then we follow him as he learns about the story of humanity and the remnants of ancient technology.

As usual, Reynolds has written a magnificent story. Very imaginative. However as too often with his books, the ending feels a bit rushed and too much left to be explained. Still, a very good read.

Woken Furies

Posted by on July 21, 2010 No comments | 1,699 views

Woken Furies Book CoverWoken Furies is the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by the British science fiction author Richard Morgan. I reviewed the first book, Altered Carbon, in September 2009 (here). The second book I never reviewed on its own. It’s called Broken Angels in any case. Each of the books stand on their own, and there is little dependency on the previous one to read the next. Actually I don’t think it matter much which order you read them in at all.

In the first book, Altered Carbon, Kovacs is on earth, some time in the future, when we have colonized the nearby solar systems. He is investigating a murder, and you have your classical private detective story in a curious futuristic and pretty bleak setting. Added to this is Richard Morgan’s rough touch. His characters and settings are pretty hardcore. Violence and sex is frequent, yet suits the story very well.

In the second book, Broken Angels, Kovacs is investigating an alien planet where a corporation is trying to secure an alien portal in the middle of a war zone. The aliens, the Martians as they’re referred to, is an alien race that once inhabited Mars and a number of other planets about a million years ago. They left technology and ruins, and a lot of mysteries. The interest of this portal causes violent fights between corporations, and our “hero” is in the middle of it.

In this third and last book, Woken Furies, we meet Kovacs back on the planet where he once were born. In this version of our future, the human consciousness is stored in a chip implanted in your spine, so you are able to change body if you should die or just want an upgrade. Also, as a means of punishment, you may be put in storage for decades or even centuries. Kovacs reappear after being in storage for a long time, finding a planet not much like the one he grew up on. This book is about politics and is centred around a revolutionary character from the early days of the settlement of the planet. Old revolutionaries which have spent the better part of the last couple of centuries in a small surfer town, is called to arms and the revolution is back on. This is yet another fascinating and imaginative book that keeps you interested from page one. Maybe the best one of the three in my opinion. Yet I wouldn’t want to miss any of them.

Does God Get Diarrhea?

Posted by on March 21, 2010 No comments | 4,261 views

Does God Get Diarrhea?I came across this book on a forum and since it was available for download at the time, I decided to have a look at it. As expected this book is not for the weak, and especially not the weak religious type. It is deliberately written to provoke the religious, but that said, it is damned funny for those of us who doesn’t care. The arguments provided in the book are still good ones, and he makes several good points about the silliness of religion.

Worth reading for both it’s comedy-value and for its insights into the case of Christianity.

Official website: www.doesgodgetdiarrhea.com